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iie PERSONALITY OF GOD 


BOOKLETS BY LYMAN ABBOTT. 
+ 
Bound in the uniform dainty style of the 
“What is Worth While Series.” 
—+— 
Each 35 cents by mail. 


—_e— 


THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
SALVATION FROM SIN. 
THE SOUL'S QUEST AFTER GOD, 
THE SUPERNATURAL. 
— 
THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO., 
NEW YORK. 


DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 


THE PERSONALITY 
OF GOD 


BY 


LYMAN ABBOTT 


AUTHOR OF “SALVATION FROM SIN,” “THE SUPERNATURAL,” 
“THE SOUL’S QUEST AFTER GOD” 


NEW YORK 
THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 


COPYRIGHT, 1905, . 
By THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO, 


PuBLisHED FEBRUARY, 1905. 


PREFATORY NOTE 


Tuis little book aims to be a compact presen- 
tation of the views concerning the personality 
of God which Dr. Abbott has for many years 
expressed in his sermons and writings. The 
author neither desires nor professes in these 
pages to formulate any new or radical theo- 
logical theories. His hope is that he may be 
able to show the honest, sincere, and rational 
man, who is confused by the difference of 
opinion between a certain school of theologians 
and a certain school of scientists, that a belief 
in the loving Fatherhood of God is entirely 
consistent with an acceptance of a thoroughly 
modern scientific conception of the universe, 
of its genesis, and of the laws which display 
themselves in its greatest movements and most 
minute details. 

The book is based upon an address which 


was first delivered before the National Council 
5 


6 PREFATORY NOTE 


of Congregational Churches at Des Moines, 
Iowa, on October 19, 1904. At that time it 
appeared to excite no great antagonism, but to 
be received with sympathetic approval. The 
address was afterwards given in the form of a 
sermon in Appleton Chapel, Harvard Univer- 
sity, on December 18. For some inexplicable 
reason the newspapers of the country seized 
upon the sermon as a radical expression of an 
entirely new theology, and in every part of the 
United States news paragraphs and editorial 
comment were printed about it. Some of the 
newspaper comment was personal in its criti- 
cism, but much of it was thoughtful and sym- 
pathetic. The author has received from all 
parts of the country a deluge of letters con- 
cerning the sermon and address, which is now 
printed in book form. A few of these letters 
were denunciations of the author and his views. 
The great majority, however, were in the form 
of serious and honest discussion of the subject, 
or of thanks for what seemed to the writers to 
be a simple and clear presentation of the idea 
that a simple faith in the personality of God 


PREFATORY NOTE 7 


does not conflict with the modern knowledge of 
the vastness of the universe in which our own 
world plays but a trifling part. 

The address is reprinted in the form of this 
small book, with the hope that it may give some 
comfort and courage to those who, having had 
to abandon their former notions, have come to 
the conception that time, space, the past, the 
future, the immense array of the stars of the 
sky, and the irresistible power of the chemical 
and electrical forces of nature exist not merely 
for this little world and for a chosen portion 
of the human race that dwells upon it; those, 
in fact, who, having a new conception of the 
magnitude of the universe, yet wish to hold fast 
to their belief in a knowing, willing, loving, 
personal God. 


THE PUBLISHERS. 


frie PERSONALITY OF GOD 


ANY converging tendencies have operated 
to bring about a time peculiarly adapted 
for great spiritual work in and through the 
Christian Church. We have already entered 
upon an epoch, intellectual, social, spiritual, 
which we can make an epoch of the greatest 
spiritual movement the world has ever seen. 
When Christianity passed over into Europe, it 
found Europe dominated by a great imperialistic 
system. Czsarwasthesupreme authority. His 
edicts were absolute law — ecclesiastical, civil, 
political law —throughout the empire. He was 
represented by a host of subordinates, who were 
simply the instruments to interpret and execute 
these laws. He was absolutely inaccessible to 
the great multitude of the citizens of the Roman 
Empire; they could come to him only through 
his subordinates, who were mediators between 
9 


10 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD 


the people and the Emperor. Christianity, 
entering into Europe and pervading it, adopted, 
naturally, as its ecclesiastical machinery, this 
framework of government. The pagan Roman 
Empire was transformed, as Mr. Bryce has well 
shown us, into the Holy Roman Empire. Czesar 
became the Pope; the prefects and sub-prefects 
became bishops and archbishops and rectors and 
curates; but the essential principle of the ecclesi- 
astical system remained what the essential prin- 
ciple of the political system had been — absolute 
imperialism. The Pope was the vicar and repre- 
sentative of Almighty God— the supreme and 
absolute authority. The decrees of the Vati- 
can were the laws of God. The bishops and 
archbishops and curates and rectors were the 
representatives of this Cesar. They were the 
mediators between him and the people. 

At the same time Christianity was modified 
in its thinking, or rather was transformed in 
its thinking, by this imperialistic system. The 
Hebrews were not philosophers. The Old 
Testament contains no philosophy; the New 
Testament contains very little, except such as 


THE PERSONALITY OF GOD II 


is to be found in Paul’s Epistles, and not a 
great deal even there. But when Christianity 
passed over into Europe it took on a philosophic 
form, and therefore the Roman form, and there- 
fore the imperialistic form. God was conceived 
of as a celestial Czesar, sitting in the centre of 
the universe and ruling it. The Church was 
the representative of this divine Cesar. The 
laws of God were edicts issued from him and 
handed down to men. This God was inacces- 
sible to the great majority of men: they had 
no ears to hear him, no capacity to reach him; 
they must reach him through mediators. First 
was Christ, the divine Mediator. But Christ 
was too holy and too remote. Next there was 
the Mother of God, as the mediator through 
whom to come to the Christ; but she was too 
holy and too remote. Then there were saints to 
come to the Mother of God, and priests to come 
to the saints. And so the individual came to the 
priest, and the priest to the saints, and the saints 
to the Mother of God, and the Mother of God 
to Christ, and Christ to the Eternal. The Eter- 
nal was an absentee God, dwelling in a far-off 


12 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD 


world. Law issued from him; sin was disobedi- 
ence to that law; forgiveness was remission of 
the penalty for violating that law; access to him 
was only through a throng of mediators. 

The Reformation broke down the ecclesiastical 
system for the Reformers and the children of the 
Reformers. The Protestant world said, ‘The 
Pope is not the vicar of God; the Church is not 
the supreme and final authority.” The Church 
had held to the sacredness of the Bible, but to the 
Bible as the constitution of the Church. It was 
not for the common people; it was for the 
Church; and the Church was to interpret it 
and to declare its meaning. The Protestant 
Reformers went back of the Church, of the 
priesthood, of the human mediators, to the Bible. 
They said, ‘““Any man may take this constitution ; 
any man may interpret it.” But still Protestant- 
ism accepted and adopted — unconsciously, per- 
haps—the notion of an absentee God. Still 
God was conceived of as enthroned in the cen- 
tre of the universe, as the Moral Governor; and 
laws as edicts issued from him; and sin as dis- 
obedience to those laws; and forgiveness as 


THE PERSONALITY OF GOD 13 


remission of a future penalty; and the Bible as 
the book of his laws, and an authoritative state- 
ment of certain conditions precedent to obtain- 
ing that forgiveness. 

But presently there began to come another set 
of influences weakening the belief that the Bi- 
ble is an ultimate and supreme authority. First 
came geology, with its message that the world 
was not made in six days. The Church replied, 
“Six days does not mean six days; it means six 
long periods.” Then came anthropology, with its 
message that man was not created six thousand 
years ago; that he has been on the earth at least 
ten or fifteen or twenty thousand years. The 
Church replied, ‘The Bible is not authority on 
matters of chronology.” Then came evolutionary 
science, with its message that man was not made 
perfect; he has been developed gradually, like 
all other animals, from a germ. And then the 
Church replied — nothing. Then followed liter- 
ary criticism. It analyzed this Bible, and com- 
pared it with other literatures, and announced 
its conclusions: These laws of Moses were not 
handed down complete, once for all; they are 


14 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD 


composed of various elements which can be 
distinguished ; this code of laws was gradually 
produced, and the progress of their gradual de- 
velopment can be traced. Then came the study 
of comparative religions, with its message: We 
can find the Hebraic legends of creation and fall 
and deluge in the older religions of Egypt, of 
Phoenicia, and of Assyria. Little by little the 
Protestant faith that the Bible is the supreme 
and final authority was weakened, and for some 
destroyed. Whether we like it or not, that les- 
sening of the authority of the Book as a book 
must be recognized. We have only to compare 
the sermons of the great orthodox preachers of 
the past and the present to see the difference 
of appeal. 

While this process was going on within the 
churches, there was going on a process without, 
subtle, powerful, irresistible. Science was at- 
tacking the notion of an absentee God, a God who 
can be defined, described, analyzed, interpreted 
increeds. Science, which, first, showed how vast 
the universe was; which, secondly, showed how 
the universe was all one; which, third, showed 


THE PERSONALITY OF GOD 15 


that the same forces were at work in this world 
and in the remotest sun and in this epoch and in 
the remotest epoch, so that all days are equally 
‘creative, undermined the notion of a celestial 
/Czesar sitting on a celestial throne afar off, 
| creating matter and force out of nothing, and 
laws to govern them, and leaving them to their 
‘own operation with occasional interventions on 
his part. Then came history. History had 
been mere annals, the mere story of events, the 
mere record of lives. Voltaire, I think, was the 
first one to portray history as a development of | 
life. He was followed by others, —Mommsen, ; 
Curtis, Arnold, Buckle, Macaulay, Green. All 
these men differed from the old classical his- 
torians in tracing history as a gradual process 
of development — the widening out and the up- 
building of humanity —and in thus showing a 
divine development in humanity as science had 
shown it in nature. Then came literature and 
the study of comparative literatures, the litera- 
tures of Greece and Rome and Italy and Eng- 
land, and last, but not least, of the Hebrew 
people, and of the common life of man that 


16 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD 


animates them all and underlies them all; and 
the discovery (for it was almost a discovery) that 
remorse is as universal as the human race, and 
forgiveness as universal, and love and pity and 
sympathy as universal; and that underneath all 
nations and all races and in all eras there beats, 
not merely one blood, but one human, palpitating, 
emotive life. This process has been resisted by 
some men in the Church and feared by more; 
but the resistance has been in vain and the fears 
have been needless. For it has been a divinely 
ordered process toward a profounder faith, a 
larger hope, and a closer and tenderer love. 
One day some years ago a young man called 
upon me with a long list of theological questions. 
He wanted to get copy for his newspaper, and 
he asked me toanswer them. I was bowing him 
out with a polite declination when he stopped 
me: “Just a moment, please. Do you believe 
in a personal God?” ‘ What do you mean by a 
personal God?” I asked. ‘ Well,” he said, “I 
mean—lI mean a big man sitting up in the cen- 
tre of the universe and ruling things.” No,” 
I said, “I do not believe in that kind of a 


THE PERSONALITY OF GOD 17 


personal God.” “Well, then,” he said, “you 
are a pantheist!”’ 

That picture of a “big man sitting up in the ~ 
centre of the universe ruling things,” was a very 
crude expression for a belief that was universal 
in the Middle Ages. Among the cartoons of 
Raphael is one representing the creation. A 
venerable gentleman is represented as seated 
cross-legged upon the ground, with the various 
portions of a child’s Noah’s Ark before him, 
putting the different parts of the animals to- 
gether. It was a great artist’s conception of a 
divine creation. That notion of an absentee 
God—an imperial Czesar sitting in the centre 
of the universe ruling things, whose edicts are 
laws, who is approached only from afar by men 
—that is gone, or going. There are some of us 
who still cling to it, and to whom the removal of 
that image seems like atheism; some that are 
trying to cling to it, though their grasp is loos- 
ening; some that are trying to make themselves 
believe that they still believe in it; but it has 
gone, or is going. Not merely the final author- 
ity of the Church is undermined; not merely 


18 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD 


the authority of the Book as an ultimate court of 
appeal is lessened; but the conception of a God 
sitting in the centre of the universe ruling things, 
as an imperial Cesar sits in Rome ruling things 
—that also is growing dim or absolutely disap- 
pearing. What is coming in its place? 

I am not going to ask the theologians what 
is coming in its place; I will first ask the scien- 
tists. 

Herbert Spencer was not, in my opinion, a 
great philosopher; but he was a_ great inter- 
preter of the philosophic tendency of his times ; 
and this_is Herbert Spencer’s answer to the 
question, what will science put in the place of 
this conception of a divine Cesar sitting in a 
celestial robe: 


But one truth must ever grow clearer —the truth that 
there is an Inscrutable Existence everywhere manifested, 
to which we can neither find nor conceive either beginning 
orend. Amid the mysteries which become the more mys- 
terious the more they are thought about, there will remain 
this one absolute certainty, that we are ever in the presence 


of an Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all things | 


proceed. 
What has science to offer? This: that we 
are ever in the presence of an Infinite and Eter- 


THE PERSONALITY OF GOD 19 


nal Energy, from which all things proceed. No 
longer an absentee God; no longer a Great 
First Cause, setting in motion secondary causes 
which frame the world; no longer a divine me- 
chanic, who has built the world, stored it with 
forces, launched it upon its course, and now and 
again interferes with its operation if it goes not 
right; but one great, eternal, underlying Cause, 
as truly operative to-day as he was in that first 
day when the morning stars sang together — 
every day a creative day. That is the word of 


“ science. 


What is the word of history? The historian 
ment, and that history illustrates that progress, 
and that not only the individual man grows 
from babyhood to manhood, but the whole race 
of men grow from infantile beginnings to a 
future, we know not what. Is there any mean- 
ing in this? Is there any power behind it? 
And what does this power mean? And, again, 
we turn to a historian, not a theologian, — not 
even an orthodox historian, — to Matthew Arnold. 
He tells that the one thing history makes sure is 


20 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD 


that there is a power not ourselves that makes 
for righteousness; a power to-day at work in 
the world as truly and as efficaciously as ever in 
the past; that the evolutionary processes that 
are going on are making for righteousness. 
Finally, we turn to literature, and we ask one 
of the great poets to tell us what is to take the 
place of this Romanized conception of an absen- 
tee God. What has human experience to tell? 
What word have the men of vision to bring 
back to us as the product of their insight into 
human life? And this is Tennyson’s reply: 


“The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the 

plains, 

Are not these, O soul, the vision of Him who reigns ? 

Dark is the world to thee; thyself art the reason why; 

For is He not all but that which has power to feel, Iam I ? 

Glory about thee, without thee; and thou fulfillest thy 
doom, 

Making Him broken gleams, and a stifled splendor and 
gloom. 

Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and spirit with spirit 
can meet; 

Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands or 
fect.) 


The notion of a humanized God, sitting in 
the centre of the universe ruling things, is gone; 


THE PERSONALITY OF GOD 21 


and in the place of it science has brought us 
back this: “We are ever in the presence of 
the Infinite;’”’ and history has brought us back 
this: “There is a power not ourselves that 


makes for righteousness;” and literature has 
brought us back this: “Spirit with spirit can 
meet; closer is He than breathing, nearer than 
hands or feet.” 

Am I then a pantheist? Is this pantheism ? 
I suppose there are a great many persons who 
do feel that this changed conception of God is 
going to destroy the personality of the Divine. 
Is it? 

Go into a great cathedral, as St. Paul’s or St. 
Peter’s. As you look on these great pillars, on 
this great dome, this splendid architecture, you 
say: I see here the fruit of the personality of 
Wren or of Michael Angelo; I am looking on 
something more than stones and mortar; I am 
looking on the work of a great mind and a great 
heart. But now imagine for one moment that 
as you stood there you could see stone reared 
upon stone, and column upon column; you could 
see some invisible hand tracing the fretwork 


22 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD 


around the columns and carving the beautiful 
forms; as you looked, the cathedral grew into 
its splendid proportions ; and then some invisible 
force lifted the great dome and put it like the 
dome of heaven on the columns underneath. 
Would you think the personality was gone be- 
cause it was operative before your eyes? Am 
I to think that there was a personal God six 
thousand years ago, or sixty thousand years ago, 
or six hundred thousand years ago, and that 
to-day, when I can go out and see him painting 
the leaves, and starting this fall the beginnings 
for next year’s spring — see the love and life of 
the ever present God at work before my eyes, 
can I think that his personality is gone? No; 
a thousand times nearer, a thousand times closer. 
We are in the presence of the great Divine per- 
sonality. What we mean by personality is this: 
The Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which 
all things proceed, is an energy that thinks, 
that feels, that purposes and does; and is think- 
ing and feeling and purposing and doing as a 
conscious life, of which ours is but a poor and 
broken reflection. 


THE PERSONALITY OF GOD 23 


The image which in my childhood I formed of 
God as a great king sitting upon a great white 
throne was really an idol, though it was not 
formed of stone nor painted upon a canvas. It 
is not to such an imagination we are to go for a 
realization of the personality of God. God has | 
personified himself in human history. He has | 
entered into one human life, and filled that life | 
so full of himself that in Jesus Christ we see the | 
image of the Invisible God. Christianity is not / 
an episode. The life of Christ is not a histori- 
cal event completed in three short years. Jesus | 
Christ is the revelation of an Eternal Fact, and 
the Eternal Fact is the Ever Present God. I , 
stood one night on the top of Mount Washing- 
ton. The clouds were passing over the moun- 
tain all the evening, and the moon was behind 
them, and I stood in a diffused light, sometimes 
brighter, sometimes less bright; but every now 
and then the moon would seem to break through 
the clouds, and bend down and rush toward the 
earth as though it would kiss the very foreheads 
of those of us who were looking at it, and then 
as suddenly it would retire again, and the clouds 


24 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD 


once more obscure it. But it was always there. 

So the “Light that lighteth every man that 

cometh into the world” was always in the 

world, and always will be in the world as long 

as God is love and man has need of him. The 

coming of Christ to the Church was in order 

that we might know that God is. It was the 

_revelation of a perpetual incarnation; the reve- 

lation of an unseen but eternal presence. Too? 
long we have stood at the foot of the cross or at" 
the door of the tomb, and not seen the stone 

rolled away and the triumphant Saviour emerg- 

ing. Too long we have thought of the life of 

Christ ending with his passion and death. But 

the greatest part of his life is his post-resurrec- 

tion life. 

For the message of the Gospel is not merely 
that Jesus Christ lived and died eighteen hun- 
dred years ago, living here for three short years 
and then disappearing, to be an absentee Christ; 
it is that God is always pouring out his life upon 
men and into their hearts, lifting them up out of 
their sins, succoring them from their remorse, 
and making them live again. Long before 


THE PERSONALITY OF GOD 25 


Christ lived the Psalmist wrote: “Bless the 
Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless 
his holy name; who healeth all thy diseases ; 
who forgiveth all thine iniquities ; who redeem- 
eth thy life from destruction, who crowneth thee 
with lovingkindness and tender mercies.” Men 
said, ‘What does that mean?” And God said, 
“T will tell you.” And he came, and for a lit- 
tle while he lived among men; he forgave the 
woman that was a sinner, and bade her go in 
peace, and sinnomore. This, he said, is what I 
mean by forgiving iniquity. He succored doubt- 
ing Thomas from the scepticism in which he was 
entangled, of the unstable Peter he made a rock, 
and of the ambitious John the beloved disciple 
and the prophet of a spiritual life. This, he said, 
is what I mean by the healing of diseases. He 
surrounded the traitor Judas Iscariot with love, 
and recovered the denying Peter and sent him 
back, reconsecrated, to his ministry. This, he 
said, is what I mean by saving men from their 
own destruction. 

Did he cease then? He has been doing this 
work of love ever since. The history of the 


26 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD 


world has been simply this: man sinning, God 
forgiving ; man diseased, God healing; man de- 
stroying himself, God redeeming him from his 
self-destruction ; man sordid and selling himself 
into slavery, and God recovering him from slav- 
ery and crowning him with lovingkindness and 
tender mercies. And the message of the Chris- 
tian minister to-day to this sorrowing, sinful, 
troubled humanity is, “The God that was in 
the world then is in the world now.” It is 
not Browning’s message, ‘‘ God’s in his heaven; 
all’s right with the world.” If God were in his 
heaven, all would not be right with the world. 
He is in his world making it right. 

I suppose there are some of you here to-night 
who will feel that this frank recognition of the 
overthrow of old forms of faith is injurious. I 
wish you who hold still to the sacredness of the 
Roman theology would consider this question 
one moment. You remember how Gideon, beat- 
ing out the grapes in the wine-press, was told 
by God to destroy the idol of Baal and cut down 
the groves, and how, when the people came out 
the next morning and found their idol and their 


THE PERSONALITY OF GOD 27 


sacred grove gone, they rose in wrath against 
him, because he had destroyed their religion. 
But he had not destroyed their religion; he had 
simply given it a wider scope and a purer life. 
You remember how, when Jesus Christ told the 
people at Jerusalem that the temple would be 
destroyed, they identified religion with that tem- 
ple and with those sacrifices and that priest- 
hood, and counted as an enemy of religion any 
man who said that all those things were to be 
destroyed. But he was not the enemy of reli- 
gion; and the destruction of that Jerusalem and 
of that priesthood and the overthrow of those 
sacrifices were only the opening out of a larger 
life. You remember how, when Luther said, 
Pope, you are no vicar of God; Church, you 
are no infallible representative of God, men all 
over Europe — honest men, devout men, godly 
men, and godly women — wrung their hands in 
despair and said, If there is no Church to inter- 
pret God’s law, how shall we know what it is? 
But here in this audience I need not argue that 
the destruction of the notion of an infailible 
Church only widened the scope and enhanced 


28 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD 


the power of religion. May it not perhaps be 
that the same God who destroyed the idol of 
Baal and the Jewish temple, and for us Protes- 
tants the power of the medizval Church, has 
destroyed this idol that we have reared in our 
minds only in order that he may bring us nearer 
to himself ? 

God is in all nature; thank God for the 
scientists, for they are thinking the thoughts of 
God after him, whether they know it or not. 
God is in all humanity, and every man is a 
child of God whom we are to endeavor to bring 
back to his Father. God is in history, forgiving 
and redeeming, as Christ was in Palestine, for- 
giving and redeeming. God is in human expe- 
rience, inspiring, uplifting, life-giving. Our 
message to our congregations is not a mere 
ethical law, not a mere philosophy about God, 
not a mere reiteration of a traditional creed, not 
a mere interpretation of the Bible. But through 
ethics, and philosophy, and the creed, and the 
Bible, we are to bring this threefold message: the 
message of science — “‘ We are ever in the pres- 
ence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy, from 


THE PERSONALITY OF GOD 29 


which all things proceed ;”’ the message of his- 
tory — “There is a power not ourselves that 
makes for righteousness ;”” the message of liter- 
ature— “Speak to him, for he hears; closer is 
he than breathing, nearer than hands and feet.” 
“We are all his offspring; he is not far from 
any one of us; in him we live and move and 
have our being.” 


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